Paul Tonks and I attended the Draper City Council meeting last night. (April 27th) They had on the agenda as a study item to discuss having a SunCrest (TRSSD) Advisory Board. Since this was just a discussion between city council members no public comments can be given…isn’t that nice! So here is the outcome of the discussion: Colbert , Rappleye, and Mayor Smith wanted an advisory board for TRSSD. Stenquist was strongly against it. He commented that they had a Community advisory board before and it turned political and problems developed so it had to be dissolved. Cobert commented that the previous Community advisory board was different and that the council didn’t handle their funds. TRSSD is special because the SunCrest residents pay this special tax and feel they don’t have a say about it. Rappeleye, made some great comments saying the advisory board could do the research on stuff like stop signs and using a private vendor. Stenquist was still was against it saying we didn’t need another layer of government. We voted in the city council members so we should trust them to make the right decisions with our funds. Stenquist also said if we have concerns about our special tax then we should talk directly to city council. Summerhays seemed to be leaning more against it but was on the fence. He wanted more information and how Walker felt. Walker wasn’t at the city council meeting so we don’t know his feelings. But it has been heard he is against it and voted against it last time it was brought up. So the city council decided it needed further discussion and can be voted on at a later city council meeting.
It was brought up about holding a town hall meeting for the SunCrest Residents. It was said that there isn’t time in May and maybe they could fit it in June? (yeah…after our budget is already been approved!)
You don’t know how hard it was to have to sit there and not be able to say anything. The comments made by the city council people that I wrote weren’t word for word but the way I heard and remembered by my memory. I could tell that Colbert and Rappleye really heard our voices at the meeting and want to help us. They believe we have concerns that need to be addressed and have some great ideas. They tried hard to convince the other councilmen. I don’t know how talking directly to city council about our concerns work as Jeff Stenquist advised? I have been emailing and talking to them and I just seem ignored. We even held the SunCrest residents meeting the other week to express our concerns. I mean really what more else can we do to EXPRESS our concerns about TRSSD? Do we need to email and call them every day until they listen! Alright, I am not telling you to do that.
Mr. Tonks suggested that we have a right to have a SunCrest resident on the actual board. There are state statues to back this up. Of course he wasn’t allowed to speak last night to show the council of his findings and that we want an actual SunCrest resident on the VOTING TRSSD budget board. I would love to have that but I think an advisory board would be great too. A group of 5 residents volunteering their time to research items like, stop signs, do we need or want a salt dome, would it be worth switching to a private vendor verses the city workers. There are so many things we can do and reach out to residents to hear what they want. We are offering our FREE service to the city.
I wanted to know if anyone has some suggestions on how to fight the stop sign issue. We all love the new blinking stop signs but the $24,000 for those signs shouldn’t have been taken out of the TRSSD fund. HELLO..they are stop signs, which should be out of the general fund. We need a good argument to present to council to have them refund us back on those signs. They say it’s because of fog and snow we needed those lights to see the signs. Yes, that is nice and all but I thought most accidents and traffic tickets occurred when people (mostly non residents) come up to the crest of the hill and didn’t even see them and ran through them in the middle of a nice day. Do we have anyone interested in getting those public police records of accidents and tickets at that intersection over the past couple of years? Let me know if you can think of something special that was done for traffic or something else unusual that the city had to do for LOWER Draper. Anything we can do to prove the point we shouldn’t have to pay for them.
Please look for further updates. Once we see the Advisory Board come up on the agenda again we want to notify everyone so we can fill that city hall and express our concerns. We will also have more information about our rights when it comes to a Special District tax.
Amy Baird
suncrestresidents@gmail.com
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